My Submission (Number 25) on the NDIS Bill (2024)

Ignoring the Risk of the Lack of Capability

This is my submission (number 25) to the Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs Inquiry into National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 published on the Parliament of Australia website. This submission is now protected by Parliamentary Privilege.

PDF of my Submission is here.

I stated in my submission, that I believe the NDIS Bill remains fundamentally defective, and these amendments do not change the fact of the NDIA’s serious capability deficits across so many dimensions, and the organisational lack of experience in implementing large scale economic change management.

Even if the NDIS Bill is passed, implementation will fail and Participants will suffer harm, as a direct result of the NDIA’s lack of capability to implement.

The thesis of this submission, is that the NDIS Review and this Bill (with amendments) not only ignore the NDIA’s lack of capability to implement, but by radically changing the foundations of the NDIS, add extraordinary risk to already very fragile and defective systems and processes.

To reiterate. This Bill (with amendments) ignores the lack of capability of the NDIA to implement, and yet is built on untested assumptions of automation. And while the NDIS Review sets out a five-year timeframe for reform, while also bizarrely ignoring the NDIA’s lack of capability to implement, many of the items within this Bill are needed to allow for those changes to take place. This is an insurmountable disconnect.